


Bucky Knows Four Names

by wallflowerdalek



Series: Bucky Barnes, Third Wheel [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anal Sex, Bucky doesn't know how to people, Creeper, Dubious Ethics, M/M, Masturbation, Stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 21:14:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1443202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wallflowerdalek/pseuds/wallflowerdalek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier, Bucky begins to learn how to be alive again. He's not great at it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bucky Knows Four Names

Bucky has them in his rifle sight. They’re close enough to each other that he can watch them both at the same time. Convenient, though if he had to chose he’d just be on Steve. The flying one doesn’t matter, not like Steve matters.

Bucky feels empty. He can’t remember sleeping or eating. He knows that, once, he would’ve been shaking, his body refusing to work under those conditions. But the arm (not his arm, _their_ arm) is always steady. Always right. He gets strength from its cold, hard steadiness.

They’re talking passionately. The graveyard is mostly empty, and they are taking advantage of the privacy. They have flowers, wrapped in clear crinkly plastic. Something—a bird, he thinks—passes through his line of sight, and in that split second Steve and the flying one have moved closer to each other. Their bodies are pressed together. Their faces indistinguishable. Bucky watches them pull away. He feels as breathless as they look. They both blush. They show teeth, uncomfortable grins. Steve tries to fix the flowers that were crushed between them. They move toward each other again, and then away. The flying one’s face betrays a moment of panic as the one-eyed man appears.

Bucky watches them all talk, or really, he watches Steve as they talk. He carries his emotions close to the surface—his respect for the one-eyed man, his comfort with the flying one. And Natasha comes—Bucky knows her, the memory closer to the surface of murkiness that is his mind. They know each other. She goes, and then Steve and the flying one leave together, and Bucky folds up his rifle. He doesn’t empty any bullets from it, because he never loaded it.

 

Steve and the flying one have been meeting with people for two weeks now. Bucky recognizes some, but not others, and he knows no names. Bucky only knew three names. Steve. Natasha. James Buchanan Barnes—Bucky. He learned that last one at a museum. He learned a lot there, more than he can understand these days, maybe more than he can ever understand.

Now he knows four names, though. The flying one and Steve were in a grocery store, and Bucky took an immense risk and followed them in. A dare to himself, maybe, and anyway, he needed some food.

They had a basket each, with wine and bread and little blocks of cheese. It was hard for Bucky to see what was in those baskets, but it was a challenge that suited him. He needed a challenge. As he stood nearby, smuggling energy bars into his clothing, he heard Steve talking. His voice, so easy, so confident. That was Bucky’s Steve, not the screaming man he had battled on the helicarrier.

“I was 15 when prohibition ended!”

“And they didn’t bring wine back til, what, the 1960s?”

“We had wine.”

“Then why don’t you know anything about it?”

“It didn’t come in boxes back then, and Natasha suggested I try it. Look, I added it to my list.”

“Natasha—of course she did. Look, you try it on your own time. And until then…”

“I’ll let you handle the wine, Sam. Promise.”

They had laughed and walked away, stood in line to check out. Bucky bought a package of some kind of soupy potato mixture for $3.50. His metal arm was in a sling, to hide the shine of metal, and the sling was stuffed with energy bars. He had a Coke in each pocket.

Four names. Steve. Natasha. Bucky. And Sam. Sam, the flying one.

 

They stayed at Sam’s house that night for the first time. Previously they had stayed in cheap motels, with two rooms, and Steve had been easy to watch. Bucky had watched the door, and had laid a line near the windows so that he could tell if Steve snuck out. Steve never snuck out.

Tonight they were in Sam’s house, which would’ve been harder to watch, if they had thought to close any curtains. Instead, they are in full view, and Bucky has no need of his scope. He set it up anyway, in case they went further away. He lies on a roof, under the sweeping branches of a unkempt tree, invisible and relaxed.  He could stay here for many nights, if they continued looking for him.

Steve wanted to find him, but Bucky didn’t want to be found. He had spent forever under the heel of Hydra, locked in cells or frozen in tubes, and now he could feel like a person again.

But Steve was smart, and Bucky had to stay one step ahead of him. So he needed to know where Steve was. Always. So he watched him.

This night they drink wine, and Steve’s smile is more easy than he’d ever seen it. Sam cooks, moving around like a bird of prey, full of motion, purposeful. Bucky focuses the scope on Steve’s face, but he lays next to it, watching Steve’s face as he speaks, listens, smiles. And then Sam is in front of Steve, and they are kissing again. They kiss for a while, and then they sit on a couch, and then they lay on a couch, and Bucky can’t see Steve, not one bit. He waits. What else does he have?

Time creeps on. Bucky eats an energy bar, carefully securing the wrapper in his plastic grocery sack. Everything had so much plastic these days. The energy bar was peanut flavored and too sweet, but he had chosen the flavor himself, and in that it was perfect. Before, vaguely, he remembered endless meals of porridge and stringy meat, and then, later, formed meat patties with salty gray sauce.

But this energy bar, he chose the flavor of. It is his. And the coke was—very different than before. It still tickles his throat though. He likes the tickle.

Bucky looks over at the house. He can see them again. They are naked. Steve sits on the arm of the couch, wide, flawless shoulders taking up more space than should be possible. And Sam—Sam’s bare, sinewy back and perfect bottom are facing towards Bucky as his head move up and down between Steve’s legs—

Bucky looks away, blushing fire-red for possibly the first time in 70 years. And then he looks back, fascinated. These things happened—he’d always heard rumors—but he’d never seen—hadn’t much thought—and Steve had never told him—he didn’t think. He couldn’t remember.

Now Steve is leaning back, and Sam is standing—moving his hips. His body flexes. Bucky moves to the rifle scope. He can see sweat on both their bodies, lightly glistening. Steve’s fingers cling to the couch as if he were about to fall, his legs wrapped around Sam’s purposefully moving body. They are moving so slowly, so carefully, and then faster and faster, carelessly caught up in each other. And then Steve lets go, looking for all the world as if he were falling, only Sam is there to catch him. And Steve’s face is so beautifully, blissfully happy.

Torn between not wanting to stop watching and a sudden urge to urinate, Bucky fumbles with his pants, and then, confused and surprised, finds that peeing would be impossible. His cock is engorged. He had forgotten—it had been so long since—since he’d had a mind for that.  Now, like remembering how to select his own food and use money to buy things, it was coming back to him. Urgently.

He glances back at Sam’s house. They are gone. With his right hand gently working his cock, remembering, he searches for them. Had they left? Then—he sees shadows in the curtains-mostly-drawn bedroom, and the motion of blankets. They will probably stay there all night, Bucky realizes.

They are settled into bed, cozy and alive and blissful, while, on the chilly roof, Bucky remembers how to jerk off. He deposits his orgasm into the plastic bag of energy bar wrappers and coke bottles, and then, pants still unbuttoned, he sleeps well for the first time in decades.

 

He wakes up as the sun rises, and realizes he is not alone. Bucky tilts his head and meets Steve’s eyes. Steve sits next to the rifle, next to the plastic trashbag, next to Bucky, sleepy and unbuttoned. Bucky closes his eyes again, and wishes he was frozen.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first finished fanfiction in about twelve years, so, uh, yup. 
> 
> Thanks to gabby_silang for being my sounding board and fixin' my tenses. You can also blame gabby_silang, you know, for being my sounding board.


End file.
